Another day on the river
14 July 2008 | Atmata, Curonian Sea; Lithuania
Dispite a magnificent red sunset last night the weather was crappy in the morning. It had rained the most part o the night, and the skys wrere still gray with gusty W-NW winds between 20 and 30 knots. The river didn't seem wide enough to make us feel secure in turning around under sail if need would be, so we motored the few miles. This river trip came out as a kind of an anti-climax since there was a bridge on 'our' side of Rusn�. The chart didn't say anything of the maximum mast height (we could actually not even find the bridge on the chart) nor was there any sign at all.
I anticipated that it was somewhere around meter to low or one meter higher than our masthead, but certainly didn't feel tempted to gamble on this by attempting to go through.....
So we turned around again, and motored back against a still gusting wind. Just before returning to the Lighthouse we met the Polish yacht I mentioned previously. They came out from another, smaller river in this delta, and with some handsigns and body language we managed to get to know that there was a marina in there. The depth obviously was enough since their boat was larger than ours.
This turned out to be a very nice spot. A public boat club with around 30 slips in the river and a clubhouse with showers and all.
In the evening, we fraternized with a group of Lithuanians who spoke english(!) and were living in the capital of Vilnius. Among other things we learned that no one knew the exact heght of the bridge but that a boat wih a mast approx. 1 meter lower than R�de Orm's, successfully had gone under it. we also gor a sweet opportunity to sample what was referred to as 'lithuanian whisky' and turned out to be home-distilled vodka, and last but far from least a very nice grilled fish, caught in the river earlier that day. Thank you guys, if you would ever come to read these lines.